Its gorgeous smashed face carries a powerful message. Its French hands stretch out in mute and powerful testimony. Three hundred and thirty-four years ago its little twitching stopped.
On the morning of June 7, 1692, Port Royal, Jamaica, lay lethargically in the oppressive tropical heat without the slightest breeze to ruffle the English flags flying over its six forts. The water lay smooth as glass in the large harbor. Bigger than New York City, only Boston could rival its size and sophistication in the British Americas. Rum, pirated gold, sugar and a vicious slave trade fueled a booming economy. Wealthy traders strutted the streets in fashionable London finery while side-stepping drunken pirates and passing the hundreds of bars and bold prostitutes in the town no more than ¼ mile long and half that wide.
Once in a while little tremors made the pictures on the wall rattle but nothing stopped the glasses clinking together in a town with a bar for every 10 inhabitants. Another little earthquake was nothing to lose sleep over. A slave rebellion — now that would be a big deal. London’s tea was sweetened with Jamaican sugar cane harvested by tens of thousands of imported slaves.
On June 7, Dr. Emmanuel Heath, the rector of the local Anglican church, sat chatting amiably with John White, the head of the local council. A tremor shook their table. Heath turned to his companion: “Lord, Sir, what’s this?” White nonchalantly replied, “It is an earthquake; be not afraid; it will soon be over.” Looking out the window as the tremors intensified, they could see the steeple of the Anglican church crumble, bringing the great bell down with it. Both men bolted for safety.
The Race for Safety
Heath, bricks from crumbling houses on either side of the street rolling across his feet, raced for the three-story-tall stone fortress that lay on the edge of town. Glancing toward his place of safety, he felt a sudden chill — a massive wall of salt water was cresting over the whole place. There was no doubt in his mind — this was judgment day. Heath headed for home to meet death there.
Water surged up through the sandy soil of Port Royal, launching some inhabitants high into the air. Others were sucked downward into subterranean caverns and sluiced along the sewer-like streams to be violently shot upward somewhere else in town. One man sucked into the sandy soil of the dirty street was swept along in the underground river until he shot up through the floorboards and was deposited inside a distant house — bruised, battered and alive. Others were yanked down into the liquefied earth until only their heads showed aboveground. Then the water was vacuumed completely out of the soil, causing it to tighten its cement-like grip on their bodies, squeezing out every vestige of air.
The long dead resting in the cemeteries were summarily exhumed and deposited, together with the newly dead, in the harbor. For weeks the fish from beneath and the fowls from above feasted on the results.
Somehow Dr. Heath reached his front door and stepped inside. Not a single picture hung even half an inch out of place. Crowds began to gather outside in the street in front of his house. Dr. Heath ran to meet them and led them in prayer. A couple hundred yards away timbers cracked, bricks crashed to the ground as homes were smashed, people screamed, and waterspouts burst a hundred feet in the air from the middle of city streets. Unknown to him, Heath’s house wasn’t built on sand but on a huge coral mass. Millions of tiny sea creatures had died and joined together in a hardened mass that gave him a firm foundation on Port Royal’s judgment day. That reminds me of another death that creates the only place safe from the wrath of God: “And be found in Him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith” (Philippians 3:99And be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith: (Philippians 3:9)).
The smashed face of the designer pocket watch, designed by the French maker Blondel, stopped with its hands pointing to 11:43 a.m. Six minutes after it began, the quake was over. Time had run out for 35% of the town population carried off by the waves or buried in the sand. In the ensuing three weeks, disease and injuries claimed another 35%.
It wasn’t as though there had been no warning. But the warnings were ignored. God warns us about sin too. It’s rather hard to miss the point of “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:2323For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; (Romans 3:23)). But many dismiss such bold messages because God doesn’t tend to bring immediate judgment on sin. Too many abuse the fact that “the Lord ... is long-suffering to usward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9). Like the citizens of Port Royal who scoffed at the little tremors that shook the town, they ignore the warning signs of coming disaster. But on June 7, 1692, at 11:43 a.m., the smashed face of the pocket watch recorded the end of Port Royal. When will your clock stop ticking?
A Change of Heart
Like the scavengers in the harbor, scavengers on land broke down the remaining locked doors and looted every chest of gold and every valuable they could lay their hands on. Pirates who’d been lifted from their drunken stupor on the beach and been dumped inland by the tsunami drifted back down into the town to pick up where they had left off. The salt waters that swept through the town hadn’t swept their hearts clean. What they wanted on the morning of June 7, they still wanted in the evening. But the city of Port Royal was finished. It struggled to its knees but never managed to stand up. Within a few years, it sank back down and lay as a comatose backwater for the rest of history. Time had run out on its day of glory.
Every person that’s ever lived has a reckoning day. For some the change of heart comes while their life-clock is still ticking. It comes when they recognize their need of a whole new life that only God can give. Some quietly in their hearts and some more openly cry out, “God be merciful to me a sinner” (Luke 18:1313And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner. (Luke 18:13)). Others scoff at the idea that life ends in anything more than a gray and misty nothingness. The twinges and tremors of doubt are something to be ignored and laughed off as superstition. They will have their reckoning day after the hands on their life-clock stop forever. “I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works” (Revelation 20:1212And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works. (Revelation 20:12)).
When will your time run out?
Find out more about the consequences of trifling with sin in A High-Risk Selfie.